ON A PILGRIMAGE TO PALANI

Recently I had gone on a pilgrimage to the famous hill temple town in South i.e. Palani, one of
the six abodes of Lord Dhandayudhapani and also our family deity Palani along with my family. My in-
laws too joined us from Chennai. We had booked our accommodation in a hotel in advance considering
my aged in-laws though I think any pilgrim can always find one even if you don’t book in advance, thanks
to the number of good hotels offering comfortable boarding and lodging facilities at competitive rates.
We considered ourselves fortunate to have selected a hotel for the first time as it was located in front of
the main entrance to the hill temple. We could enjoy a full view of the hill including the temple of Lord
Vinayaka at the entrance and the temple of Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar on one side. The city
administration has apparently been doing good work in providing and maintaining the required
amenities to the visiting bhaktas and of course the cleanliness of the areas in and around the town to
the swelling visitors and invariably to the local residents. Still there exists a scope of improvement.

We reached the temple town in the evening. As a customary practice, we stayed there that
night and early morning on the next day, we started to climb. Few things would never miss the attention
of devotees on the way to the hilltop especially on the days of festivals, when there is large number of
visitors. It was a bright summer day. You will find the pilgrims climbing the hill light up camphor in the
centre of the steps to show their devotion or to fulfill their vows. We felt that Temple administration
should make some arrangements if possible without causing any inconvenience to the pilgrims climbing
the steps as these acts of lighting camphor may contribute to overheating of the areas, already exposed
to hot rays of the Sun. Second thing which attracted me the most is the crowd, waiting to board the
coaches at Winch point. One always wonder why these youngsters and healthy (not-so-weak) persons
need to travel by those coaches despite having convenient steps including the slides (in the local
parlance “Yanai Pathai” (Elephant road - it is laid for the convenience of temple elephants going up and
down). Basically the winch is meant to serve the purpose of carrying the aged and weak persons,
wishing to have darshan of Lord Subrahmanya. But in reality, that is not the case. You find all grown-ups
and healthy people waiting for hours to have a ride at the expense of aged and infant-carrying mothers,
who wait those extra hours, which they could have saved en route to the hill shrine. The Temple Board
should consider opening special counters for issuing tickets to senior citizens and other weaker sections
of people as well as reducing the waiting time for these classes of people.

We returned home after having a satisfying darshan of our family deity, though understandably
we had to wait for long in the queue. We hope that the conditions there would further improve
especially towards the health-wise weaker sections of the pilgrims including the physically challenged.